Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive?

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Edit: This story was written to detail the options a user has when a hard drive with important data dies unexpectedly. Many of you have left comments advocating the freezer trick, stating that used as a Hail Mary, you’ve had good results. I do not dispute that the freezer trick *can* work. If you have a hard drive you don’t really care about, and you’re curious to see if you can get the data, by all means, freeze it.

If you do need your data back to the point that you’re considering paying someone to retrieve it, do not freeze the drive, even as a Hail Mary. You may very well make the problem worse and end up costing yourself money.

On June 22, 2012, my primary hard drive, a Samsung HD103SI, quietly passed away. There was no warning — no grinding, no clicks, clacks, or sudden bang. One moment, I was working on a story, the next, I wasn’t.

It quickly became clear that something more serious than a simple system lock had happened. Post-reboot, the HDD would spin up smoothly, beep 12 times, and then spin down. The drive was never recognized in BIOS, which nixed any chance of using disk recovery software to extract data.

This is a story of my efforts to repair the drive myself, my research into the question of whether or not users can repair modern hard drives, and the results of my efforts. If your drive is still detected in BIOS, you may be able to use software tools to retrieve your data. Here, we’re going to focus exclusively on hardware-related failures, and what your options are.

Part of the reason for writing this story is that data recovery is difficult to accurately research unless you’re fairly versed in it to start with. There are dozens of data recovery firms, all promising clean rooms, the latest tools, and highly trained professional staff. Many firms refuse to publish their prices online, which makes comparisons difficult, and it’s apparently common for small companies to farm tough jobs out to larger ones.

This one, for example, is pretty much toast

Step 1: Broadly identify the type of problem

There are two broad categories of problems that can nuke a drive: PCB issues and internal component failures. If the problem is inside the drive, skip down to Step 3. If the problem is on the PCB, there is a glimmer of hope.

Original image courtesy of mdproductions.ca

The best kind of PCB problem to have is a blown Transient Voltage Supressor (TVS) diode, as shown above. According to Seagate’s FAQ, a TVS diode “protects a sensitive circuit by diverting damaging overvoltages and spikes away from the load.” When a spike occurs, the diode blows. Because the diode is no longer functional, the drive won’t power up. Snip the diode off, and the drive will function normally, albeit in an unprotected fashion. Copy your data over to a functional unit, toss the old one, and count yourself lucky.

My hard drive unfortunately didn’t die this way. There was no visible damage to the PCB but when I removed the board and flipped it over I found a burned-out contact point.

Step 2: Understand your options

From here, you’ve got two choices. You can opt for a replacement PCB, or you can buy an entire donor drive. It’s important to secure as close a match as possible between the original HDD and the donor drive/board. In my case, that meant finding an HD103SI PCB that matched my drive’s make/model number, PCB number, board revision, and drive family (Trinity, in this case).

The drive controller model number and PCB codes are outlined in red.

Understand this: Simply replacing the PCB almost certainly won’t fix a dead drive. If it does, you’ve gotten lucky. Each drive ROM contains parameters and data unique to that particular device — if the parameters for your dead drive are different from those contained on the donor PCB, it won’t function.

In my case, I opted for just a PCB. In retrospect, a full drive might have been the better option, but the purchase only set me back $22 and ~14 days while my part took the slowboat from China. Swapping out the PCB eliminated the 12 beeps, but accomplished nothing else. Beep-less, my drive sat mute — spinning, but unrecognized in BIOS.

Your options at this point depend on what sort of HDD you have. Some hard drives have an externally mounted ROM/NVRAM chip that can be removed and soldered on to a new PCB. Other drives, like mine, incorporate the ROM into the controller. The only way to find out is to go digging for information online, and you’ve got to apply a strong sort filter to estimate the value of what you’ll find. A number of dubious websites advertise a “PC3000 PCI” card, for example, but this is almost always a Chinese clone of the original product, and is far too old to handle modern drives in any case. The real PC3000 UDMA test kit runs over $4000 — far more than the typical cost of a data recovery.

After my simple PCB swap didn’t work, I decided to try to repair the burned contacts on the original board. Here, your options are to either buy a conductive ink pen or to use something a bit more humble. I took the humble option, trotted over to an auto parts store, and picked up a rear window defroster repair kit. I taped off the damaged contact, applied the conductive ink, gave it 12 hours of drying time, fired up the drive…

My repaired PCB. The burned contact is at the far lower right of the group

And nothing had changed. The drive still spun up, emitted twelve beeps, and spun back down.

That was my second major disappointment and it leads directly to the next step…

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